Strategizing for sustainability: navigating paradoxes in waste networks

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how managers in a regional waste network perceive value and how they strategize for sustainability by navigating paradoxes. Design/methodology/approach The study follows a qualitative, abductive case study approach with a regional Danish waste network. Data include semi-structured interviews with waste collectors, dialogue and observations of network meetings, follow-up interviews and company documents. Building on the Industrial Network Approach and in combination with paradox literature, the analysis examines how managers’ evolving value perceptions and network understanding shape strategizing for sustainability. Findings The study shows that recurring tensions associated with value misalignment become interconnected across relationships and contribute to the development and persistence of three interdependent paradoxes in the network: (1) transformative intentions vs transactional constraints; (2) shared ambitions vs siloed execution and (3) circular practice vs linear interactions. Instead of resolving these, managers navigate them by continuously adapting and realigning strategizing efforts as established routines and relational logics continue to reinforce the conditions through which these paradoxes persist. Originality/value These insights extend the industrial network approach by demonstrating that strategizing for sustainability evolves through the continuous navigation of persistent paradoxes, which calls on managers to make value perceptions and network structures objects of strategic action.